'No,' Eric said. But of course he had. It was his job.
'Traditionally it's a psychosis occurring in alcoholics; it consists of actual pathological destruction of cortical brain tissue due to long periods of intoxication. But it also can occur from the steady use of narcotic drugs.'
'Are you saying that Kathy has it?'
'Remember those periods when she wouldn't eat for three days at a time? And her violent, destructive rages – and ideas of reference, that everyone was being mean to her. Korsakow's syndrome, and not from JJ-180, but from all the drugs she took prior to that. The doctors at Cheyenne, while getting her ready to be returned to San Diego, ran an E E G on her and picked it up. They'll tell you very soon after your return to 2055. So prepare yourself.' He added, 'It's irreversible. Needless to say. Removal of the toxic agents is not enough.'
Both of them were silent then.
'It's rough,' his 2056 self said finally, 'to be married to a woman with psychotic traits. As well as showing her physical deterioration. She's still my wife. Our wife. Under phenothia-zine sedation she's quiet, anyhow. You know, it's interesting that I – we – didn't pick it up, weren't able to diagnose a case we're living with day in, day out. A commentary on the blinding aspects of subjectivity and over-familiarity. It unfolded slowly, of course; that tended to conceal its identity. I think eventually she'll have to be institutionalized, but I'm putting that off. Possibly until after the war's won. Which it will be.'
'You have proof? Through JJ-180?'
'Nobody's using JJ-180 any more except for Lilistar, and that as you know is only for the toxic and addictive properties. So many alternate futures have been disclosed that the task of relating them to our world had to be put aside for after the war. It takes literally years to test out a new drug thoroughly; we both know that. But of course we'll win the war; the reegs have invested half of Lilistar's Empire. Now listen to me. I have instructions for you and you must fulfill them; otherwise another alternate future will split off and it may cancel my stand with you against the 'Star MPs.'
'I understand,' Eric said.
'In Arizona, at POW Camp 29, there's a reeg major from the reegian intelligence service. Del Dal Il is his code name; you can contact him through that, since it's Terra's code not theirs. The camp authorities have got him studying insurance claims filed against the government in order to detect frauds, if you can believe that. So he's still busy at work piping data back to his superiors, even through our POW. It's he who'll be the link between Molinari and the reegs.'
'What do I do with him? Take him to Cheyenne?'
'To Tijuana. To TF&D's central offices. You buy him from the camp authorities; it's slave labor. You didn't know that, did you, that large Terran industrial constellations could acquire free labor from the POW camps. Well, when you show up at Camp 29 and tell them you're from TF&D and you want a clever reeg, they'll understand.'
'You learn something new every day of the week,' Eric said.
'But your main problem lies with Molinari. It's up to you to persuade him to visit Tijuana to confer with Deg Dal Il and hence establish the first link in the chain of circumstances that's going to get Terra pried loose from Lilistar and over to the reegs without everyone being killed in the process. I'll tell you why it'll be difficult. Molinari has a scheme. He's been involved in a personal struggle, man to man, against Freneksy; it's his masculinity that he feels is at stake. For him it's not abstract, it's immediate and physical. And you saw the virile Molinari strutting on the video tape. That's his secret weapon, his V-2. He's starting to throw in the healthy duplicates of himself from the rank of parallel worlds, and as he knows he's got quite a supply of them to draw on. His whole psychology, his point of orientation, is to dabble with death and yet somehow surmount it. Now's the time for him to demonstrate his way. In confrontation with Minister Freneksy – whom he fears – he can die a thousand times and still spring back. The deteriorating process, the encroachment of his psychosomatic illness process, will cease as soon as he throws the first healthy Molinari in. And when you get back to Cheyenne you'll just be in time to witness it; the video tapes go on all the TV networks that night. At prime viewing time.'
Eric said musingly, 'So he's as sick right now as it will be necessary for him ever to be.'
'And that's exceedingly sick, doctor.'
'Yes, doctor.' Eric eyed his 2056 self. 'We agree in our diagnoses.'
'Late tonight, by your time, not mine, Minister Freneksy will demand – and get – another face-to-face conference with Molinari. And the healthy, virile substitute will be the one there in that room ... while the sick one, our one, recovers in his upstairs private quarters, guarded by his Secret Service, watching the video tapes on TV and thinking grand thoughts to himself as to how easily he has found a way of evading Minister Freneksy and his burgeoning, excessive demands.'
'I assume the virile Molinari from the other Terra has involved himself willingly.'
'Delighted to. All of them are. All of them see the penultimate in life as a successful grudge-battle waged above and below the belt against Freneksy. Molinari is a politician and he lives for this – lives for it while at the same time it kills him. The healthy one, after his conference with Freneksy, will suffer his first attack of pyloric spasms; the attrition will start to eat away at him, too. And so on down the rank, until at last Freneksy is dead, as someday he has to be, and hopefully before Molinari.'
'Beating Molinari to it will take some doing,' Eric said.
'But this isn't morbid; this is straight out of the Middle Ages, the clash of armed knights. Molinari is Arthur with the spear wound in his side; guess who Freneksy is. And the interesting thing, to me, is that since Lilistar has no period of chivalry, Freneksy has no comprehension of this. He simply sees it in terms of a struggle for economic domination; who runs whose factories and can sequester whose labor force.'
'No romance,' Eric said. 'How. about the reegs? Will they understand the Mole? Have they a period of knighthood in their past?'
'With four arms and a chitinous shell,' his 2056 counterpart said, 'it would have been something to see one of them in action. I don't know, because neither you nor I nor any other Terran that I ever met bothered to learn as much about reeg civilization as we should have. You have the name of the reeg intelligence major?'
'Deg something.'
'Deg. Dal. Il. Think to yourself: the dog dallied and it made him ill.'
'Mary Reineke.'
'Christ,' Eric said.
'I nauseate you, don't I? Well, you nauseate me, too; you strike me as flabby and blubbery and your posture is terrible. No wonder you're stuck with a wife like Kathy; you got what you deserved. During the next year why don't you show some guts? Why don't you pull yourself together and go find another woman so by the time it gets to me, in 2056, things aren't quite so goddam fouled up? You owe it to me; I saved your life, got you away from Lilistar's police.' His 2056 self glowered at him.
'What woman do you suggest?' Eric said guardedly.
'You're out of your mind.'
'Listen; Mary and Molinari have a quarrel about a month from now, your time. You could exploit it. I didn't but that can be changed; you can set up a slightly different future, everything the same except for the marital situation. Divorce Kathy and marry Mary Reineke or someone – anyone.' There was desperation, all at once, in his counterpart's voice. 'My God, I see this ahead, this having to institutionalize her, and for the rest of her life – I don't want to do that; I want out.'